MELISSA SHOOK

Melissa Shook (1939-2020) was an American photographer based in Chelsea, Massachusetts, best known for her self- and family portraits. She was a pioneer in exploring identity, motherhood, and interracial families, channeling the spirit of creative freedom and attending the rise of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 2024 TBW books published a monograph devoted to Melissa Shook’s Daily Self-Portraits 1972–1973 and the Nelson Atkins museum presented a solo show of the series. Galérie La Patinoire Royale Bach exhibited Shook's work in dialogue with Ken Ohara in the 2023 exhibition Autoportraits au Quotidien, and at Paris Photo.

Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard Art Musuems, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Moderna Museet Stockholm, among other institutions.
Artworks

In 1972, while teaching photography at a private high school and several colleges, Shook committed to documenting herself daily in her apartment, sometimes with her daughter, friends, and pet cat. Her insecurity as a single mother raising a biracial child and her obsession to keep her memory vivid and intact for her daughter were the main drives for this artistic mission. Over the next 8 months, Melissa developed a remarkably fertile personal landscape.
Her work, published in Camera 35 Magazine, attracted the attention of MoMA curator John Szarkowski, and he purchased a dozen prints for their collection in 1975.
"Curious about the problem of identiy, I decided to photograph myself every day for a year. I was interested in when I would forget that I had committed myself to this project. The obsession with forgetting has been central. Having forgotten my mother, what she looked like, what she was like, how she treated me before she died when I was twelve, has been an abiding concern. Not remembering meant, to some extent, having to create a self without the foundation of remembering much about those first twelve years and trying to raise a daughter without remembering having been a child."

- Melissa Shook
She became the first female photography instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1979 she joined the Arts & Art History Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, to teach photography for 31 years, leaving an indelible mark on generations of students.
Recent Exhibitions and News
Exhibitions
AUTOPORTRAITS AU QUOTIDIEN
KEN OHARA & MELISSA SHOOK 6 October - 22 December 2023
Bringing together for the first time two major series by American artists Melissa Shook and Ken Ohara, both produced in 1972-1973, Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach parallels two singular approaches...
Learn More About the Artist

Artists
MELISSA SHOOK
1939 - 2020

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.